How To Install The Gallium3D Drivers On Ubuntu 12.10

Here is a guide to install the GAllium3D drivers, you can install the Gallium3D drivers by adding the Oibaf PPA to your system.

Gallium3D is a free software library for 3D graphics device drivers. It has been developed by VMware since they acquired Tungsten Graphics (the original authors) in 2008. The Gallium3D library operates as a layer between the graphics API and the operating system with the primary goal of making driver development easier, bundling otherwise duplicated code of several different drivers at a single point, and to support modern hardware architectures. This is done by providing a better division of labor, for example, leaving memory management to the kernel DRI driver.

Gallium3D has been a part of Mesa since 2009 and is currently used by the free and open source graphics driver for Nvidia (nouveau project), and by the free and open source graphics driver for ATI Radeon R300-R900.

To add the PPA and install the Gallium3D drivers open a terminal window (press Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy+paste the following lines:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers -y

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libg3dvl-mesa -y

When installed close the terminal window and reboot your system.

To Uninstall the Gallium3D drivers and revert to the default drivers open a terminal window and copy+paste the following lines:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge -y

sudo ppa-purge ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

When the Gallium3d drivers are removed close the terminal window and reboot your system.